The present invention relates to a method for the preparation of a food having desalinating activity. More particularly, the invention relates to a method for the preparation of a food having excellent desalinating activity by the ion exchange with adsorption of sodium ions and release of potassium ions instead taking place when it is in the digestive tract of a living body.
As is well known, one of the motivating factors of hypertension and some other diseases is the overly ingestion of salt, i.e. sodium chloride, so that desalination of foods is the most important and effective dietetic care for the patients suffering from hypertension or renal troubles and those who wish to prevent these diseases. Therefore, these people have been forced to take an unpalatable prescribed diet of an extremely low salty taste. It is therefore a conventional method for the medical treatment of such a patient to administrate the patient with a desalinating agent capable of adsorbing excess of sodium ions which may be an acidic ion exchange resin in the potassium form or a weakly acidic ion exchange resin in the hydrogen form with an object to remove or mitigate the adverse influences caused by the sodium ions when the patient takes an ordinary meal containing salt to give an acceptable taste. These ion exchange resins are of course inherently not edible and extremely unpalatable for the patients. Accordingly, it has been eagerly desired to develop a desalinating agent which in itself is a food of good palatability if not so nutritive.
In some of the Oriental countries, on the other hand, a traditional dietetic care for a patient of hypertension is the utilization of certain marine algae belonging to a class of rather familiar foodstuffs in those countries. The mechanism of the effectiveness of the marine algae as a desalinating agent or rather a desalinating food contributing to the decrease of the blood pressure is presumably the ion exchange activity of the marine algae to adsorb sodium ions in the living body by replacing the sodium ions with the potassium ions contained therein. A problem in the utilization of marine algae is the relatively small ion exchange capacity thereof so that the patient must take quite a large amount of the marine algae every day when a sufficiently high desalinating effect is desired thereof and not all of the patients can take such a large amount of marine algae every day.